[D66] EU austerity drives repression in Greece

[Antid Oto]

EU austerity drives repression in Greece
13 October 2012

In her lightning visit to Athens on Tuesday, German Chancellor Angela 
Merkel made clear that the European Union (EU) intends to intensify its 
attacks on the social rights and conditions of working people throughout 
Europe.

Shielded by 7,000 riot police, Merkel raced through streets that had 
been cleared of people to attend a meeting with Greek Premier Antonis 
Samaras. Her purpose was to ensure that Samaras not back down in the 
implementation of the savage austerity measures dictated by the EU. 
Merkel then met with selected entrepreneurs who hope to make a killing 
based on the starvation wages being imposed on Greek workers.

On the same day, an all-party coalition of the ruling Socialist Party, 
the right-wing Union for a Popular Majority, and the centre-right 
Democratic Movement voted in the French National Assembly for the fiscal 
pact Merkel had negotiated with former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. 
Although Sarkozy’s successor, François Hollande, won last May’s election 
in large part by pledging to renegotiate the fiscal pact, it was passed 
without so much as a comma changed. It commits France to reducing its 
budget deficit by radical social cuts.

Greece has been the example for all of Europe since it applied for 
bailouts in 2010. Wage cuts, mass layoffs and the destruction of social 
welfare programs imposed by successive Greek governments at the behest 
of the troika (the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and 
the European Central Bank) serve as a template for every other European 
country.

Though this policy has plunged Greece into the deepest recession in its 
history—condemning broad layers to poverty and unemployment, while 
pushing up Greek debt to record highs—it is now to be intensified and 
extended to the whole of Europe via the fiscal pact.

The austerity drive at every step undermines its stated goals: reducing 
state debts and maintaining the cohesion of the euro zone. However, it 
facilitates a second, unstated agenda. The European bourgeoisie, 
operating through the EU and the European governments, will not stop 
until they have lowered the living standards of European workers to 
those of Foxconn workers in China and miners in South Africa.

Even now, in the midst of the crisis, obscene levels of wealth are being 
accumulated at the top of society. Greek millionaires who have 
collectively deposited billions in Swiss bank accounts are left 
untouched, even though Greece’s finance minister has been in possession 
of incriminating data on their actions for two years. The billions of 
euros from the European bailout funds flow directly to the banks, and 
from there to the coffers of the rich, while workers are systematically 
robbed.

Greece is in the forefront not only of assaults on social rights, but 
also of political attacks on the working class.

So far the government had relied mainly on the trade unions and 
pseudo-left organizations such as the Coalition of the Radical Left 
(SYRIZA) to keep the resistance of the working class in check. The 
unions have organized limited protests to permit workers to let off 
steam, while they work with the government and spread illusions that the 
EU can be reformed and made to implement pro-working class policies.

However, these methods are wearing thin. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras 
pledged in last June’s election that he, together with the newly elected 
French president, would change the course of the EU. As the adoption of 
the fiscal pact in Paris this week has demonstrated, this perspective is 
a complete chimera.

Now the Greek bourgeoisie is turning toward the methods utilised by the 
ruling class in Europe in the 1930s: fascist terror and authoritarian 
rule. They are mobilising the most backward social layers to intimidate 
and suppress the working class.

The police torture of demonstrators protesting against the fascist party 
Chrysi Avgi (Golden Dawn) is a warning to workers internationally. 
Things that have occurred in Athens prisons recall the torture at Abu 
Ghraib and crimes last witnessed in Europe under fascist dictatorships 
in Greece, Spain and Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s.

In recent months, state forces have worked to build up Golden Dawn, 
providing political cover for its attacks on immigrants and left-wing 
opponents of the government. It is well known that a large percentage of 
the police in Greece are members or supporters of the fascist Party.

All of this is silently tolerated by the representatives of the EU. 
While the German press reacts with concern to swastikas brandished this 
week by some anti-Merkel protesters, it says nothing about the 
activities of the fascists in Greece. This is because all European 
governments are preparing to forcibly suppress working class resistance. 
In Germany, the Federal Constitutional Court recently threw out a 
previous ruling and now permits the German army to intervene domestically.

The social devastation being imposed in Europe is incompatible with 
democracy. The more class antagonisms intensify, the more the ruling 
elites feel compelled to resort to authoritarian forms of rule. What 
began with the persecution of immigrants in Greece has expanded in a 
short period of time into the torture of political opponents, and will 
in future be directed against the entire European working class.

The defence of social and democratic rights is inseparably linked to the 
struggle against the institutions of the EU and its 
counter-revolutionary policies. As was the case in the 1930s, Europe is 
confronted with stark alternatives: either the ruling elite plunges the 
continent into war and dictatorship in its attempt to secure its wealth, 
or the working class takes power and replaces the EU of the banks and 
big business with the United Socialist States of Europe.

This requires above all that workers and youth break with the unions and 
pseudo-left parties that seek to subordinate them to the EU institutions 
and the bourgeois state, thereby opening the way for the growth of 
fascist tendencies like Golden Dawn. The realization of such a program 
is only possible based on an independent movement of the working class 
and the building of the International Committee of the Fourth 
International as the international party of the working class.

Christoph Dreier

http://wsws.org/articles/2012/oct2012/pers-o13.shtml